The present invention relates to the fields of electronic marketplaces and encrypted electronic products, and more particularly to the administration of electronic markets that incorporate control of usage permissions for encrypted electronic products.
Existing electronic markets include, for example, auctions where sellers place products up for bid to buyers, or storefronts where products are offered for sale or license at a specific price.
These electronic markets are typically public markets, and therefore a party placing a product for sale, license or bid presents the product to all persons capable of connecting to the system, without the ability to electronically control who is permitted to access the market or who is permitted to use their products.
These electronic markets function as centrally administered mass meeting venues, where large numbers of buyers and sellers interact. They are technically challenging to create and require significant economic investment to build and maintain. The centralized administration of market controls means that to participate a seller is required to utilize the centralized administration controls, including controls on who is permitted to access the market and who is permitted to use the products. Thus, in these centrally administrated public markets, owners of the products have little or no direct control over the configuration or operation of the market.
Further, it is becoming common for the products being distributed through electronic marketplaces to be electronic products. For example, audio and video recordings, software, electronic books and multi-media works are all being electronically published. Electronically published materials are typically distributed in a digital form and copied on a computer-based system having the capability to display or otherwise use the materials. A fundamental issue facing those undertaking electronic publishing, is how to control and prevent the unauthorized and unaccounted distribution or usage of electronically published products. Authors and publishers may want to control who is permitted to use electronic products, and to be able to change permissions over time even after the products are distributed. Authors and publishers may also want to sell the electronic products or receive royalties for each counted delivery of the products, therefore any unaccounted distribution of the products results in unpaid royalties.
Existing web repository systems where a plurality of users can share sets of electronic products such as DocuShare™ (a trademark of Xerox Corporation), permit end users to share electronic products and administer and control initial access with individual and group access permissions through password-protected accounts, non-location-based URLs, and permissions matrices that associate access permissions for specified accounts with specified electronic products. However, end users are not able to administer or control ongoing usage with individual and group usage permissions for encrypted files through the system. Here usage is distinguished from access, in that usage refers to actually using the product (e.g., viewing or printing), and access refers to accessing a copy of the product, which if encrypted is not usable without a key for decryption. Further, end users are not able to create markets (public or private) with usage and payment options associated with individual and group accounts for particular electronic products.
Existing systems for controlling the distribution and use of electronic products such as ContentGuard™ (a trademark of Xerox Corporation), allow publishers to encrypt electronic products and specify digital property rights. However, end users cannot administer or control usage of particular electronic materials for particular individuals or groups, and only central administrators can control who has access to a market. Also, digital property rights are attached to the digital products using rights labels, and such rights are intended to be permanent or at best narrowed rather than broadened. Furthermore, because the rights labels are attached to the digital products, there is no means of changing rights options for copies of digital products that are in the customers' hands, except to locate each one of them and change the options individually. Thus, once the copies of digital products are outside of the possession of the seller, digital rights cannot be changed even if the user purchases the license after the time of the desired change.
Further, existing systems which include management of usage permissions or digital rights are currently only accessible through electronic user interfaces. There is no ability to automatically correlate usage permissions or digital rights with paper documents.
Thus, known systems for the distribution of electronic products, do not provide for highly distributed configuration and administration of public and private electronic markets. They do not allow the marketmakers or sellers to control who may access and/or use the markets or products. These centralized systems further do not give sellers the ability to upload electronic products with usage permissions controls which may be altered by the marketmaker dependent upon a particular situation. Finally, these systems do not provide an interface between the electronic markets and paper documents.